


there's not a word yet for old friends who've just met

by fardareismai



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Mistaken Identity, Modern AU, University AU, meeting online, roommate au, setting: paris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 19:19:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5714116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final of my out-of-control Tumblr prompt AUs.</p>
<p>Claire Beauchamp is looking for a roommate for her last year of medical school.  Once she decides on a girl named Jamie, she's in for several shocks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There were three responses to my advert for a flatmate.  I was pretty sure I’d found the girl I wanted, which meant I’d have to write disappointing letters to these inquiries, but Jamie had sent me another e-mail, and I was looking forward to reading that much more.

She was coming to Paris from Scotland to study Languages and History at the Universite, she said.  Our conversation so far had been about those subjects.  I could speak to history better than language, having dated a history professor named Randall for a few years before deciding to go back to school to become a doctor.

Frank had wanted to get married.  I had wanted to heal people.  Somehow, these two desires hadn’t been able to find a mesh together.

That was not important, however.  I’d found a flat halfway between the school and the hospital, and while I’d briefly enjoyed the stint of living alone and all the freedom that entailed, I’d quickly found that when left alone for long periods of time, I tended to talk to the furniture.  I’d put out an advert on the university sites immediately.

Jamie hadn’t been the first person to answer, but she’d caught my eye immediately by sounding so interested in the city itself.  She was a few years younger than I, but the language in her writing gave me confident that we would not find it difficult to communicate.  She assured me that, while she liked a good drink now and again, she wasn’t looking for the nightlife in Paris.  I had no objection to the occasional night of drink and dance, but mostly I preferred my life to be a bit quieter than the thudding music in those places allowed for.

_I’m coming to the city for the weekend to get to know the place a bit before I move in.  Would you mind if I stayed with you?  It would give us a chance to see if we’ll make good roommates._

_You needn’t feel that you have to show me around.  I don’t mind getting a bit lost if you’re busy, but I’d love to have a chance to get to know you as well._

_Regards,_

_Jamie_

I smiled at her e-mail.  I sent one back assuring her that she could feel free to stay with me for the weekend, and I was free to take her through the city and show her everything she wanted to see.

I was looking forward to meeting my new friend, and offered to pick her up at the train station.

_That would be wonderful, thank you, Claire.  I’ll be relatively easy to pick out.  I’ve red hair and am very tall._

~?~?~?~?~

I stood on the train platform watching the passengers disembark, scanning every head that stood above the rest for red hair.

There was one quick start toward someone, but I quickly realized that the bright head I was looking at was attached to a pair of wide and distinctly masculine shoulders.  I turned away and continued to scan the passengers.

“Erm… are you Claire?” a voice with a light, lilting Scottish accent asked from behind me.

A man’s voice.

I turned and looked up into the face of the young red-haired man who had disembarked a few minutes ago.

“Jamie?” I asked, the whole farce suddenly becoming clear.

He smiled.  It was a very nice smile in a very handsome face, but not at all what I’d been expecting.

“Oh aye.  I thought it must be you from your description.  It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”  He offered me a hand and I took it without thinking about it, finding my small, slim hand nearly engulfed in his large, broad one.

I opened my mouth to tell him that there had been a misunderstanding- that I had thought… but he looked at me with those dark blue eyes that slanted up like a cat’s, and his young, handsome face, and I couldn’t say it to him.

“Are you hungry?” I asked instead.


	2. Chapter 2

Jamie and I dropped his bag off in my (potentially _our_ ) flat, and I took him to a small restaurant in my neighbourhood.

“Where do you want to go?  What do you want to see in Paris?” I asked, once the wine was served and the serveur had taken himself off.

“Notre Dame,” he answered without hesitation.  When I raised a brow at this quick and sure answer, he gave me a sheepish smile.  “I promised my sister, Jenny, that I’d take photos and that I’d go to Mass there once.”  His blue eyes shot to mine.  “Are you Catholic, Claire?”

“I don’t consider myself anything in particular, though I was baptized Catholic, yes.”

“Aye, well, I wouldna mind if you weren’t, I was just wondering.”

I noted that the tips of his ears were flaming and decided to return to the itenerary.

“Notre Dame holds a Vespers service every evening at 5:45.  I understand the rose window is at it most spectacular when the sun is low.”

“Aye, it would be.  I think that will be perfect then.”

“Anything else you want to see?”

The rest of the meal passed with talk.  He was as easy and comfortable to talk with as a man and in-person as he had been over e-mail.  I was conflicted, however, by the fact that I had not intended to have a male roommate, and I could not deny his physical appeal to me.  I thought being strongly attracted to my flatmate would make things more difficult than necessary.

He was charming, however, and if I didn’t think of sleeping in the room next to him, I had a lovely day.

In the evening, as the lights began to fade, we made our way to the great cathedral.  The service was small and simple, but so painfully beautiful that even my agnostic heart squeezed at the glory of it.

There, under the wash of coloured light from the window, as the prayers were sung, Jamie took my hand.  It surprised me, but when I looked at him, I could see that he hadn’t even noticed that he’d done anything.  He was looking for an anchor in a storm of feeling.

Yes, I decided in that sacred space.  We would live together, and I would damn the consequences.


	3. Chapter 3

The week before school started, Jamie moved in, as I had decided he would.  Suddenly though, after several months of multiple daily e-mails and constant conversation, we stopped talking.

We were, both of us, consumed by school.  I was in my final year before residency, and Jamie was in his first year.

We saw each other on the run in the mornings and in the evenings over our books, but rarely between times, and we rarely found time to talk.

I told myself that I didn’t mind.  He seemed to be settling into Paris without trouble- his French was excellent- and I was far too busy to be babysitting my new flatmate anyway.

I was absolutely not jealous that he clearly didn’t need me.

And, on the day that, walking through the university library I saw his distinctive red head bent over a shining blonde one, kissing her like mad, I was not jealous of that either.

It was nothing but friendship which made me speak up as our paths crossed that evening.

“You really should be using the library for its intended purpose, Jamie.  If you get banned by the librarians for inappropriate usage, you may find it difficult to finish your finals.”

He had said nothing, just glared, grabbed a box of cookies from the pantry and stalked into his own bedroom, shutting the door on me with a decided click.


	4. Chapter 4

Another few weeks went by with Jamie and I passing like ships in the night.  He seemed to harbour no ill-will against me for my unsolicited advice for his love life, though I saw not indication he had brought the blonde girl around our place.

We had never discussed the protocol for romantic liaisons.  It simply hadn’t come up in our conversations about living together.  I hoped that Jamie would warn me ahead of time if he intended to allow the girl to stay the night, but I couldn’t deny that he might not think of it, so I kept my guard up.

The longer we went without a visitor, however, the less I worried.  Perhaps it had been a one-time-thing, the pair of them.  A snog in the library, perhaps a quickie in the park, and then  _adieu chérie_ , on to the next conquest.

Jamie hadn’t struck me as the type, but one never knows.

One morning, however, Jamie did not emerge from his room by the time I was finished eating my breakfast and reading _Le Monde_.

Jamie wasn’t normally the sort to sleep in, so I was worried.  I’d seen him come in the previous night, but I wondered if, perhaps, he’d left again once I’d gone to bed- perhaps to his lady-friend’s place?

I tapped on the door to his bedroom.  Receiving no reply, I cracked the door open to look in.

I hadn’t been inside the room since Jamie had moved in, and I hadn’t been sure what to expect.  There were no decorations on the walls, nothing but the small scatter of pocket detritus across his desk and his bookshelf, which was stacked in both directions with his textbooks and his personal library.

There was a small scatter of clothes on the floor, but it wasn’t filthy.  His bed was unmade, the quilts in a lump in the middle.

Suddenly I realized that the lump of quilts was, in fact, a lump of Jamie, who was still in bed.

“Jamie?” I said, coming over to him to look at him.  His eyes were squeezed shut and his face was flushed.

I touched his cheek to find it burning with fever.

“You, my lad, are sick,” I pronounced.

He slitted open one blue eye to look at me.  “I could never have guessed,” he said in a hoarse and sarcastic rasp before closing the eye again.


	5. Chapter 5

I put in a quick call to a friend for whom I had taken notes a few times the previous semester, and asked if he would be willing to return the favour for a day or two.  He agreed and promised to drop by each evening around 5 to deliver them, and would warn me of any impending test that I would need to come in person to take.

I then left my new patient on his own for an hour to retrieve supplies from the local grocery.  Once this was done, I settled myself in for being a doctor.

“Do you have a friend who could take notes for you in your classes, Jamie?” I asked, leaning into his bedroom.

“What are you still doing here?  You should be at your own classes,” came his husky voice from under the pile of quilts.

“My friend Joe is taking notes for me today and tomorrow if necessary.  I trust him.  Who can do the same for you?  Your girlfriend?”

“I havena got a girlfriend and I dinna need you hovering over me.”

“Ah, so you’re the sort who gets grouchy when you’re sick.  I’ll make note of that.”

“Go away.”

“Do you prefer vegetable beef soup or chicken noodle?”

To this he made no answer.

“All right then, I’ll decide for myself.  I’m brewing some tea, I’ll bring you some medicine once it’s finished.  Does your throat hurt?  Do you have mucous in your lungs?  I know you’re a bit feverish, but are you congested as well?”

Jamie sat up, shoving the covers off of himself and glaring at me from under the wild red spikes of his hair.  His blue eyes glittered in his pale face, and the hectic spots of feverish color on his cheeks were heightened in comparison to his skin.

He was undressed to the waist, and I was hard-pressed to keep from whistling at the sight.  He must have seen my smile, however, because his glare sharpened and he pulled a sheet up to his chin to hide himself.

“Why can you not just leave me in peace, eh?”

I shrugged.  “You’re sick and I’m a doctor.  So… vegetable beef or chicken noodle?”


	6. Chapter 6

I was tired.  I had succeeded in bullying two cups of tea and a bowl of chicken soup into Jamie before he’d given into my hovering with bad grace and allowed me to dose him with medicine.

The medicine put him to sleep, which made him infinitely more biddable, and I was able to take his temperature and listen to his lungs with my stethescope.

It was as I had diagnosed originally: a nasty chest cold that would move into his head by the end of the week and probably clear by the following week with proper care.  Jamie had made it clear that he wouldn’t take proper care, and so I resigned myself to remaining his nurse for a few more days.

After calling Joe and warning him that I’d be out of class for another day, and getting his confirmation on my diagnosis (and an invitation for drinks once the dramatics in my home died down) I checked once more on Jamie to be sure he was asleep and settled myself down with an old film.

_Mary of Scotland_ with Katherine Hepburn was on a local station, and I settled in to watch.  About an hour into the film, Jamie’s door opened and he shuffled down the hallway into the living room wrapped in a quilt and plopped onto the sofa next to me.

“Are you all right, Jamie?  Do you need another dose of medicine?”  It was nearly time for another dose- once every four hours.

“No,” he said, his wide, pretty mouth nearly pulling into an absurd sulk.  “My head hurts.”

“I can get you some paracetamol then.  I’ll pour you some tea to take it with.”

“I dinna want tea,” he said.  I noted that his accent got stronger when he felt ill.

“I could get some-”

“I dinna want soup either.”

I smiled, allowing myself to be amused by the childishness of him.  Men all became babies when they felt ill, I had reason to know.

“What do you want to take it with then?”

“Whiskey.”

I did laugh at that.  We kept whiskey in the flat, and I considered the pros and cons of giving it to him with the medicine.

“They say whiskey and paracetamol will give you kidney disease.”

“I’ll just take the whiskey then.”

I shrugged.  I probably shouldn’t give it to him while he was taking cold medicines as well, but it would put him to sleep, and that was what he really needed.

I got up to get him a small glass of the liquid gold, and handed it to him before resuming my seat on the sofa.

He tossed the drink back like the Scotsman he was, set the glass down, and slowly fell onto the couch with his head pillowed in my lap, his quilt still wrapped around him, and his knees pulled up so that he was laying entirely on the sofa which was far too short for him.

“My head hurts,” he complained again.

“I’m sorry Jamie, I can’t give you anything for it now.”  I put my hands on his head, massaging his scalp with my fingertips, running my fingers through his soft, red curls.

“Mmmm, I dinna mind if you keep doing that, aye?”

I smiled.  He really was as endearing as a kitten as he nuzzled into my lap.

“Won’t your girlfriend mind me being so familiar?”

“Dinna have girlfriend,” he muttered.  “Girl I want’s too busy to notice.”

His speech was beginning to slur and I thought he’d be asleep in moments.  I kept stroking his head, marveling at the colour of his hair- every shade of red and roan and amber and cinnamon I could imagine, with the occasional light streak of strawberry blonde for highlight.  It was rather lovely.

After a moment, I realized that he was smiling.

“You like this then, do you?” I asked softly.

He did not answer, and I stopped my stroking.  His face relaxed into a slightly stern expression.  When I stroked his head again, he smiled again.

I left my hand in his hair and returned my attention to the movie.

I woke some three hours later with Jamie’s head still in my lap, a different movie on the television, and Joe knocking on our front door.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I start adding tropes to my tropes because everyone loves tropes...

I knocked on the frame of Jamie’s door before walking into his room.  Since his illness, we’d become ever closer, and rarely closed our doors on each other unless we were actively changing clothes or sleeping.

“Are you free on Saturday?” I asked in lieu of a greeting.

He looked up from his computer his red curls sticking up at wild angles from running his hands through it in frustration.

“Er…” he began, frowning in concentration as he brought his mind back from wherever it had been.  “I think so.  Nothing so important I canna cancel, why?”

I sat on the edge of his bed and sighed.

“The foundation that provides my scholarship is holding a dinner, and I have to be there.  Normally I wouldn’t mind going alone but… well… my ex is on the board and…” I shrugged.  “Vanity prevails- I don’t want him to think I’ve been pining for him.  Would you mind?”

“So long as you dinna mind that the only formal wear I brought to France is a kilt.”

~?~?~?~?~

I absolutely did not mind Jamie in his kilt.  He was magnificent as he stepped out of his room in full-rig, and even moreso as he conversed pleasantly with the boring foundation members at the dinner.

He never left my side, playing the devoted lover role to perfection, and I several times saw Frank Randall’s eyes flick to us, then away, back to the blonde woman who had come on his arm.

I honestly didn’t have much attention to spare for Frank, to be honest.  Jamie engaged me in conversation as easily in the formal setting as he did back in our own flat.  He was equally capable of discussing academic financials as he was arguing with me about which Doctor on Doctor Who was the best.

After dinner, at which Jamie had been charming and Frank had sat at the other end of the table, he left me for the first time.  I had needed to sit down off of my heels, and he agreed to go get us a pair of drinks from the bar.

Almost as soon as he left my side, Frank appeared at it.

“He’s a handsome young man, where did you find him?”

I raised an eyebrow at him.  “Specialty shop of the internet, he’s one of a kind.  Where did you find yours?  Looks like the sort you can get a job lot of off of Amazon.”

I winced at myself.  I wasn’t usually vindictive, but seeing Frank and remembering those last few months as I applied to medical school seemed to bring the worst out of me.

“She can at least hold her tongue,” Frank said, echoing my own thoughts.  He sighed then.  “I’m sorry, Claire, I shouldn’t have started that way.  I didn’t come over here to fight with you.”

“Why _did_ you come over, Frank?”

“Are you and that lad serious?  Honestly?  Because I’ve thought of things, the way they were there at the end, and I think-”

“Oh we’re quite serious,” came a pleasant voice from over my shoulder.  A large, warm hand fell to my shoulder, and I could feel the large presence of Jamie behind me.

Frank’s mouth hung open for a moment, looking all the way up at Jamie.  Finally he shut his mouth.

“Oh, I see.  How did you two meet then?”

Jamie sat beside me and took my hand in his, completely enveloping the digit.

“We met just before term started.  Claire took me sightseeing in the city.  I think I fell in love with her under the Rose Window at Notre Dame.”

I turned and looked at him, surprised by something in his voice.  He wasn’t looking his challenge at Frank anymore, but had turned those slanted blue eyes on me, something deep and dark moving in their depths.

To this day, I have no idea what Frank said as he left our table.  I was lost in Jamie’s eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's all there is, there isn't anymore.

“Come dance with me,” Jamie said when the band struck up.

I was still dumbstruck, but allowed him to pull me up and onto the floor, spinning me into a hold and swaying with me.

“Did you mean it, Jamie?  What you said to Frank?”

“That I fell in love with you at Notre Dame?  Oh aye, of course I meant it.  I wouldna lie to you.”

“But you never said anything.”

Jamie shrugged and spun me away from another dancing couple.  “I had only met you a few hours before.  I might have been mistaken.”

“But you weren’t?”

“Oh no, not a bit.  I’ve loved you practically since the moment I met you.  I was halfway there just from your e-mails.”

“But the girl in the library?”

He smiled sheepishly.  “Well… I am a man, after all, and man, as they say, is weak.  She was no one.  Just a girl from a class and… well… after I saw you I knew I was just trying to find something to comfort me, and it wasna fair to the lass.  I sent her on.”

“Oh.”  For some reason, that idea made me feel warm just beneath my heart.

“But what about you?  I’ve gone and spilled my heart… you look pleased enough but…”

“Well,” I began, hesitating, “I didn’t fall in love with your e-mails.”

“No?”

“No.  I thought you were a girl.”

That stopped him dead in his tracks.  He stared at me, dumbstruck as other dancers swirled around us.

Finally, after staring at me for a very long time, he threw back his copper-bright head and laughed.


End file.
